Results for "wearable computer"

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has joined the board of portable gadget specialist Jawbone - known for its UP fitness monitor, headsets, and speakers - it's reported, reigniting chatter that the search company might look to leveraging wearables along the lines of Google's Glass. Mayer had apparently been in talks with Jawbone about a director's position prior to joining Yahoo back in July 2012, so AllThingsD reports, and has already attended at least one board meeting sources at the company claim.

Neuromancer author and arguably the father of wearable tech in fiction William Gibson finally met up with Google Glass at the weekend, donning the headset and finding - to his frustration - himself left intrigued by it. Gibson - whose 1984 novel coined the term "cyberspace" as well as kickstarted the cyberpunk genre - got to try out Google's developer-version of the wearable at an event at the New York Public Library, after one member of the audience brought along their new unit.

When it comes to controlling a computer from across the room, such as your home theater PC, finding a place to use a traditional mouse can be a challenge. The problem with using a mouse from the couch is that you often end up having to lean forward and use it on the coffee table or the curved arm of your couch, which doesn't always work well. Genius previously offered the original Ring Mouse and the company has announced an updated version.

If you've been waiting for a smartwatch ever since Apple released the super-cute iPod that fit perfectly on a wristwatch strap, you may be in luck - Google is reportedly making one running Android. But then there've been reports of Apple making a smartwatch too. And LG is making one as well, and Samsung, and who knows which other companies - smartwatches from every angle, I tell you! But today's report about Google comes from the Financial Times where they've got an inside contact, so it's best we listen.

Google Now doesn't get the recognition it deserves, but that will change if Google's Matias Duarte, director of Android user experience, has anything to do with it, and it may well be in a comfortable marriage with Project Glass. SlashGear sat down with Duarte at Mobile World Congress this week to talk Google Now and how it and Glass, not only share some common DNA, but might well find themselves the future of Android itself.

Google has re-opened preorders for its Glass wearable computer, though it's not just a case of opening up your wallet to the tune of $1,500: you'll need to have some good ideas as to what exactly to do with the wearable to qualify. First put up for sale at Google I/O 2012 as the limited edition Glass Explorer Edition, still yet to ship though promised sometime in early 2013, the new round of orders extends the net to developers across the US.

The augmented reality scene is hotting up, with the promise of full computer-mediated vision for the mainstream and another hint that Google won't have the Glass market all to itself thanks to an incoming headset from startup Meta. The wearable project actually goes one step further than Project Glass, putting a full twin-display digital environment - controlled by two hand 3D tracking - in front of the user, rather than floating notifications and prompts in the corner of their eye as Google's system does.

The candid snapshot of Google exec Sergey Brin, riding the subway on a $2.25 fare while sporting a Glass prototype worth thousands of dollars, has reignited questions around ubiquitous computing. That sighting of Brin is a timely one. Not only is Google's Glass Foundry developer schedule kicking off at the end of January, but several other wearables projects have reached milestones this month; Vuzix brought out prototypes of its Glass rival a few weeks back, while Kickstarter success Memoto applied some extra-sensor balm to the sting of an unexpected hardware delay today.

As each project tracks toward release, however, the ecosystem of more straightforward body-worn gadgetry such as activity monitors like Jawbone's UP picks up for what's predicted to be a bumper year of sales. Still, among sensor ubiquity and the specter of power paucity, the fledgling wearables industry hasn't apparently decided whether it'll face this brave new augmented world hand-in-hand, or jealously guarding its data.

This week we had a brief chat with Will Powell, a developer responsible for some rather fantastic advances in the world of what Google has suddenly made a very visible category of devices: wearable technology. With Google's Project Glass nearer and nearer reality with each passing day, we asked Powell how his own projects were making advances at the same time, and how he saw advances in mobile gadgets as moving forward - and possibly away from smartphones and tablets entirely.

The augmented reality researcher at the center of allegations of assault over sporting a wearable computer in public has warned that ubiquitous cameras - and the potential for privacy incidents - are only going to increase. Professor Steve Mann, the father of wearables who claimed McDonald's staff in Paris assaulted him and damaged his advanced EyeTap headset earlier this month, fired back at criticisms that his constantly-running camera was a provocation to the privacy-minded. "Ironically the people most frightened of cameras seem to be the ones who are pointing cameras at us (e.g. big multinational organizations)" Mann argues.